working with promising writers
—in between the lines—
captivating them with their own words
under-aged over-qualified writers using language with such dexterity— agility— humor—— at times the words themselves don't know what to expect and next thing you know— you find you're counting syllables as our way with words begins to rub off onto your fingertips—you've got newsprint writers on your hands....

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Not the pages-blow-in-the-warm-breeze, vacation-on-the-beach or loungin-at-the-summerhouse summer reading, I mean the required-by-school, untouched andsummer-days-blow-past-books-must-be-read-school-is-starting-page-one summer reading. And here we stand looking over the edge of summer— balancing on the edge, that time of year when summer reading can't wait— becomes a weight— and you carry the books around with you everywhere whether you read them or not...

Summer reading never did a vacation make. I never knew how to take from the edges and make something of it. It wasn’t until I was overloaded with reading in university as an English and dramatic arts major, and in graduate MBA and MBC studies, that I realized the part of education that is simply, deciding which books to carry— to read— to get to later— and the ones that somehow never—

The edge, in time—With simplymore things to read than can possibly be read, one must find a way of learning that is both realistic and comfortable, in order to survive, enjoy and actually learn. The sooner you can learn to learn, to appreciate and find relevance in words, both reading and writing, in your own way, you can make it work, anywhere. Now I know, and I do it all the time for myself, though I'm not in school anymore, and I encourage this with students that I mentor, because I love to inspire writing and a sort of three-dimensional learning in everyone, I mean, it's right there—

In the midst of the madness and chaos of studies is when I found myself devising strategies that finally carried me somewhere else and helped me live through, very much like when I was trapped in the MRI tube earlier this year, moments before I panicked, when I transformed my perception of the horrible noises that surrounded me inside the tube, until I heard a sort of techno music... eventually finding a strange calmness inside, but that's another story.

There are many ways to figure out how to live through and experience learning, instead of just flipping past page numbers as fast as possible because it's the night before school starts and you have two books to read, (it's not gonna happen, btw) so really focus on part of the book, really take something away from it that you can use. For instance, I could tell you about writing papers about books you haven’t finished reading (or, for that matter, haven’t started!) the art of thoroughly examining one chapter and writing a five-page paper on it, or scouring one of Shakespeare's soliloquies, or arguing the significance of a single apostrophe in the title of one of his plays (I’m not kidding, I did that) but in doing so, learning as much as you would have— if not more— from scanning the entire text. If you get to a point when you have to be... creative... in your choices, then do it, but learn something from it, make something of it.

Cutting corners? Ok, but challenge your skills of analysis— what can you do with the time you have, and how can you get involved so that you can't stop talking about this project? Figure it out now and you will save all the time later. Critically look in between the words and lines of the text. Bring a new take to well-known works— write a fresh opinion instead of turning in the same copy of the same paper that everyone else has turned in before you and forgotten.

Now of course, you have to know your audience, some teachers just don’t want anything but exactly— specifically— strictly— what they have outlined as the reason of existence for the book and subsequently expect to read in your paper, but writing around the edges and inquiring into the depths of the smallest details, or simply playing around with the themes, their relevance, researching the before—during—after— of when the text was written, checking into the life of the author (the real person, the writer, like me, like you), or just writing inspired ideas that arise with the themes and words of the text— these have the potential to become something else along the way... write them down scribble them in the edges somewhere they will benefit you. Write it down, even if it doesn't have anything to do with the book, maybe the book sparked another idea, scribble it down.

(And, hey, if nothing else, you can start a blog and share these outside findings that you’ve scribbled trimmed and collected from around the edges. I'm serious, this stuff will be good.)

The things we carry...

Which is exactly what I recommended to one of the high school students who I started working with recently, start a blog with all the thoughts you have as you're reading this book, so that you don't just carry them around in your mind and forget them, write them down. Then when you have to write a paper or talk about the book, you have so many inspirations to use, and hey you might even come up with some side projects for yourself. Take cool quotes and write them down, write a haiku, a six word story, make commentary about it, something funny or a personal connection with the book, or write something completely unrelated, it might get you started on something that could carry you somewhere else.

If books and words and writing and the lives of authors mingled with their works are experiencedinstead of just flipped past—scanned— read for the number of pages counted— and tested— they really can be carried long past the time when you lug them along in a bag of obligation. In fact, from a completely different place, now, I too, am carrying around this bunch of summer reading books, like, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, and discovering more about him as a writer has inspired me as a writer. Just this weekend I entered the lives of three authors, uncovered three styles of writing that instantly marked my present thinking and future ideas of storytelling and, I got involved in three new books (even if I don’t get around to finishing them.. ha!) all at once.

Cringe.

Over the phonebefore our initial meeting, I asked a high school students about her summer reading books. She named The Princess Bride, and I’m glad she couldn’t see my face when she said that title... So when we first met in the café, I sat down at the table and said (with as straight a face as I could make) ‘Uh, do you, uh... like—The Princess Bride the movie?’ And to my great relief she said no she’d never liked it and she was always the only girl who never wanted to watch it when she was at a sleepover with a bunch of adoring Princess Bride fans. ‘Oh me too, it makes me sick to my stomach to think about it’ I told her, not trying to be biased or anything— but really it does. I just can’t stand the movie. I just... can’t.

‘So, then how’s the book?’ I asked. Because, you know, sometimes books are better than cheesy romantic movies. She said she really wasn’t that far into it... 'Ok,well, I do like a challenge,' so I told her I would pick up a copy and see for myself before I, well, judged a book by its cover (though the cover is... uh..ugh, so...) or by its sappymovie.. or.... Anyway. We both realized we’d never even seen the end of the movie, or we couldn’t remember the end of it, probably having fallen asleep to stop from the utter nausea of watching it,we agreed.

And then I challenged her, 'let’s write a poem about this movie that makes us sick. Let’s try to do side projects while reading it, be it poems, haiku, side notes, thoughts, great quotes, etc... Hey, you could even start a blog... let’s find a reason to enjoy this book, from our own perspective, see it through your eyes.' And so, from what we remembered and with an effort to keep our stomachs from turning right there at that table in the café, we took paper and pen and wrote the following:

(I laughed when I read her poem, and almost didn’t need to read the book it was such a great summary...)

(Then inspired by her poem, along with brief cringes and unpleasant thoughts of what I think I remembered from the movie, I wrote....)

sword fights ugly—
cuts
deep thoughts of—
shallow glances at

nothingbuttercup

never grows
in quicksand

and live through it

And so, we’ll seeabout the blog, it could be really fun, funny, and I’m very serious (serious, as in, I mean it let’s do it) and I reminded her that no one reads blogs unless you tell them to, and even then, hardly anyone reads them, so there’s really nothing to be shy about, it’s simply a way to play with words, with thoughts, to craft your reading of a book, of books— perhaps of not only bringing this book to life, but bringing your own thoughts, reading, words and writing to life. But a blog is just one of many ways to do this, in any case, try in some way, to live through it. You’ve got a lot of books left to carry, so you might as well let us share the weight with you, and let them carry you somewhere else as well.

x c

PS.To all my friends, people reading etc... somewhere else who didn’t grow up as a young girl practically forced to adooooorrre The Princess Bride movie, I guess I never asked (or cared to ask) if you knew or participated in the (extremely tedious unpleasant) 'tradition' of watching it (over and over and over until some of us were sick.) Don’t ask me why, for some reason girls and many women (I think) just believe this is the best movie, they even say words like classic, and ooooohh ahhhhhhhhhhh sooo cuuuuuuuuuttteee just the sweeeeeeeeeeeetest, and soooooo romantic, and....ok I can’t talk about it or like that anymore, but... when young girls all get together before they sleep they all scream and oooooh and ahhhh and have to waaaaaaatch this. You get the point. I hope some of you were able to avoid this. And for everyone else who looooooooooves it, sorry if I hurt your feelings :)

PPS.I did some research on the author and the book and the writing of the book, even before I read it (hint: this can make the book far more interesting and add another layer to the reading of the text) there are some hidden layers, details and, I have to admit it, funny aspects of this book and the way it was written that are completely lacking in the film. Perhaps I will explain later.

PPPS.I have read some of the beginning of the book aka The Princess Bride, and there is humor, it is rather clever, at times perhaps trying a bit too hard, but all in all much better than I ever could have thought, yes— already. I don’t think I’ve even cringed, and if I did at all, it was only a slight cringe, or maybe I just cringed in my mind (especially if I was alone in public...) the extra research I did before reading it has really added another dimension to the reading of the book (highly suggested, found out some cool stuff.) Also check outStealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen.

after an entire year away (we were writing the old-fashioned way... we started a NEWSPAPER!) we're back to manage both the old and the new, and all kinds of writing. let's see if we can keep it going!

inspiringwriters through their own words [six words]

i (chantal) am doing lots of mentoring and one-on-one work with writers, giving personalized tips and inspiration, and then together all of us (from second grade to high school, college level, even some adults) have been writing-- sharing-- and some exciting things are coming into view.... as we're writing from the rooftops.

anyway, after we get the next newspaper issue published, i'm looking into a way to do online writing inspiration and assistance, kind of like i used to do with haiku on twitter (if anyone is still out there from twitter) and from there we'll just keep writing and see where this takes us...

i've still been posting on my other blogs wpm and chandeliers on the floor and also there are some great pics of us kids :) etc on my flickr and we will get some up on here and post some of the writing we've done over the past year...

*O* is now in 7th grade! Abby is now in 8th!!!! Pyper is ruling the school as a 5th grader...... And, you missed it,Raquel graduated to 6th, but not before she became our front-page article writer for the newspaper we started (not to mention the comic queen...she writes amazing comics) what a year, but that's just a quick view from above, we'll show you more live glimpses from in between the life as we're writing from the rooftops.

writing from any angle

writing from the rooftops

passing on inspiration

you've got newsprint writers on your hands

making something of nothing— scribbling words spilling coffee cleaning up my messes scribbling coffee spilling poetry on napkins—
from behind big dark sunglasses and chronic migraines, good coffee gone cold and the hours, the hours where do they— i write. leaving traces of haiku on scraps of paper everywhere i go and working with promising writers— captivating them with their own words.
i read read read (despite the fact i'm a slow reader) and i'd say a good 75% of those books are picture books (ya, kids' books, whatever) and if i catch you standing there i'll start reading one to you, i believe every adult needs a good dose of children's lit every day. a picture book can turn around your entire perspective, make you laugh, and the pictures are just too good!
...in fact, i dabbled in the trade myself way back when (a year or so after this photo of me was taken, i do believe).
and since my 1st grade debut stories ‘how to make a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich’ and ‘i hate saturday morning cartoons’ i’ve had words at my fingertips and now, they're at yours—
c

"write on the sole of my shoe"

robert frost

newsprint writers

under-aged over-qualified writers using language with such dexterity— agility— humor—— at times the words themselves don't know what to expect and next thing you know— you find you're counting syllables as our way with words begins to rub off onto your fingertips—you've got newsprint writers on your hands....

Cultivating an agility to write the words that always moved you...for words

Instruction and guidance is based off of a reflection of each individual's personality, ability, interests etc.. and customized, down to the last syllable, to best fit the particular needs of every writer. A relationship and ease with words will lead to confidence and agility in communicative, creative and academic endeavors. The spark that ignites it-- the initial passion, fluency and rapport with words-- is what we seek when writing from the rooftops.

but petals keep falling from this-- [six words]

writing poems on flowers

inspiring young writers through their own words

Writing from the Rooftops

Every individual session is custom designed to best fit the needs of each child-- with expressive tools from technology, internet and new media to syllable, pencil and lined notebook paper.

A relationship with words and ease with writing will lead to confidence and agility in communicative, creative and academic endeavors. The spark that ignites it-- the initial passion, fluency and rapport with words-- is what we seek when writing from the rooftops.

words words words

wonderland

we ♥ haiku

by alexis rotella

just 17 little syllables....

haiku.

Introducing Olivia.

Otherwise known as *O*Olivia is so cool she loves to write poems and loves to hang with friends! Olivia is really fun to be around. Olivia loves all animals and is happy to just be a friend to almost anyone. Olivia Loves to help people feel good and not be sad. Olivia says “If you are sad find a good friend and have a nice talk.”

by (abby)

more about (abby)

It is more about me. Well I like to dance, play soccer, and love to write all the time.I like to and write haiku, poems, six word stories and just stories about different things.At home I like to hang out with my parents and three siblings, Taylor my oldest bother, Alec my other brother, and my little sister Pyper and Gracie my dog. I’m in seventh grade and twelve years old. Well you probably know a lot a about me now.

p.s. abby in six words {by c}

in words, stories, life—pink princess.

pyper's world in black and white

pyper's world : in black and white

pyper is currently writing her intro for you.... but i just wanted to tell you one thing about her. ok, maybe two things. the other day she told me that when she grows up she wants to be a professional soccer player and professional dancer. both! isn't that great!? that just gives you a taste of how much energy she has and how different her passions are. and another thing-- watch out for her six word stories-- they are so much fun!

Reading Raquel's Files

We have a new Rooftoper named Raquel. She loves to read, she tells a great story and talks up a storm...... but there's just one thing that's-- well-- that's gonna shock you about her-- she hates to write. I know. So Raquel will be _______ from the rooftops with us. And I bet you're wondering how you're going to be able to share in the goodness of her stories if she won't write them down. I've been asking myself the same question. Let me ask her and I'll get back to you with the answer to this puzzling dilemma. But anyway, we welcome her and look forward to all her stories. She has files and files of real life adventures stored in the computer of her mind!

Introducing Peyton

Peyton joins us with her first story for Writing from the Rooftops, the story is called Crack! Ouch! It's funny and dramatic and you can read it here! Read more about Peyton very soon....